Fabian Society

The Fabian Society is a British socialist organization whose purpose is to advance the principles of democratic socialism via gradualist and reformist effort in democracies, rather than by revolution. The society was established in 1884 by predominantly middle-class intellectuals to spread and apply socialist ideas to Britain through democratic and gradual, non-revolutionary means. Its name was derived from the Roman generals Fabius Cunctator, whose military successes in the Second Punic War were the result of his preference of piecemeal skirmishes to an all-out battle against Carthage in 217 BC. The Fabians, who included Sidney and Beatrice Webb, George Bernard Shaw, and later Ramsay MacDonald and Clement Attlee, criticized the current order not so much as unjust, but as inefficient and wasteful. The party believed that a bureaucratic elite should administer a centrally planned economy to eliminate the inefficiencies inherent in a liberal economic order, and thus avoid failures such as unemployment and poverty. Though generally attached to the Labor Party, it also had considerable influence on the new UK Liberal Party, for example in its claim that the state had a responsibility to create a minimal provision of social welfare to enable each individual to reach his or her highest potential.